PA Chosen for Award to Address Infant and Toddler Homelessness
Pennsylvania is one of 10 states across the nation that have been chosen to receive a $10,000 Thrive from the Start award.
The national initiative led by Thrive from the Start and coordinated by Zero to Three in partnership with SchoolHouse Connection, Prevent Child Abuse America, Housing Is, and the National Collaborative for Infants & Toddlers.
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The grant will enable partners within the state to build on - rather than duplicate - existing state and local efforts, while strengthening collaboration with advocacy and community partners to increase public and policymaker understanding of prenatal-through-age-3 homelessness.
Families with infants and toddlers are often invisible in traditional homelessness systems, despite facing significant developmental and health risks.
The Thrive from the Start award enables Pennsylvania to further connect the systems that affect families earliest, ensuring that stable housing and high-quality early supports are available together, so every child has the foundation to thrive.
The investment also recognizes the state’s long-standing, cross-sector work to strengthen identification, coordination, and policy responses for infants, toddlers, and expectant parents experiencing homelessness or housing instability. Through the state’s Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL), the state has built a strong foundation of systems coordination, data use, and practice improvement across early childhood, housing, health, and maternal systems.
Thrive from the Start will allow the state to deepen its prenatal-to-3 focus, align systems around a shared policy agenda, and elevate evidence-informed strategies grounded in data and lived experience.
The state’s award will be fiscally managed by the Susquehanna Education Foundation and implemented through the leadership of the OCDEL McKinney-Vento Advisory Group - of which Trying Together is a member - with grant coordination led by the Pennsylvania Head Start State Collaboration Office.